You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today!

If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please post in the first "Registration Help" subforum. You can do so without registering.

If you are a Facebook User you can login without registering using the "Facebook Connect" button at the very top of this page.

In my personal opinion, the warmest shelter would be a fire bed placed between two fire rows.

The basic start is to dig a pit in the snow down to the earth and create a fire about meter long in the direction you'll sleep. Wait until the soil thaws and keep digging it out until you have a 1m by 0.5m trough. Keep a good, hot fire in it until you have a couple centimeters of red coals (add rocks if available, wait until they are equally hot).

What you'll be doing is refilling this trough with the thawed soil you dug out and putting spruce bows over the top, as usual. The heat from the coals will warm the soil and heat you all night

You could do one of two things now: 1) go fire-happy for maximum warmth or 2) build a shelter if you expect precipitation.

1) Figure out how wide your bed will be once you fill in the trough. About half a meter on either side of your bed, build a fire row the length of your body. You don't want it too close or you'll cook. Too far away and you don't get in the heat bubble. Once you fill in your bed, cover it with spruce bows, and have the two fire rows on either side of you, you'll be able to sleep in a really comfortable temperature in any weather outside blizzard conditions.

2) The problem with 1) is if you have precipitation or winds, you'll get wet from the melted snow (and the wind might ignite your bed). Nothing wrong with building a simple A-frame over your fire bed and putting a fire outside the opening.

WARNING:This post may contain abusive language, textual violence, & a tendency to walk the line.This information is confidential and intended for the recipient exclusively. If you are not the recipient please notify the poster immediately and destroy the received post.Any non-member viewer of the private information contained within this post will incur a fee of no more than $25 plus legal costs.By reading this you acknowledge the above and consent to me hunting on your property.

IF...

You keep your shelter completely closed in on the sides and doors and make a hole in the very center of the top, you'll be ok with a fire inside. I'd keep the fire small anyway and keep rocks around it, the rocks will absorb and re-generate some of the heat if the fire burns out over night. Dome shaped structures keep wind out better and hold heat in better, just ask an Eskimo.

The more insulation you can put around the outside, the better and pine boughs make an awesome bed.

some fella confronted me the other day and asked "What's your problem?" So I told him, "I don't have a problem I am a problem"

Where I live there is a lot of shattered rocks and using 2 as uprights and 1 as a flat top and an other as the back you could build an "oven styled fire" inside the hollow. but with all fire in the interior be very carefull, a group of novice outdoor leadership students built this very same model and didn't watch it....It got away from them and got the debri shelter on fire during the night.
Other than an qullick I would prefer a leant and a reflected fire.